Winding Down and Winding Back Up

Whether this year is the very start of your doula career or whether it’s a new chapter in your continuing story, the work you do with your clients is going to be unique. No two doulas are the same, and no two clients are the same. The thing we all have in common is a desire to serve our clients and our communities.

Gearing Up for 2026

The start of a new year is always a great time for new beginnings, and in 2026 the plan is for IDLM to start big and then keep getting bigger. We are so proud and grateful to be celebrating five whole years of teaching, care, and community, and we are so glad to have you here as a part of that.

Caring for the Caretakers

We all know the importance of self care. Part of client care is making sure that the people who are caring for their loved ones have the time and the opportunity to care for themselves as well, whether that means getting away for an afternoon to do some shopping or just a couple of hours to get a decent meal and a nap.

Playing the Long Game

In many places, death work is still not normalized. The problem isn’t that people don’t want or need the services of a death doula; it’s that they have never heard of a death doula in the first place. Nobody they know has ever hired a death doula. Why should they?

Is It Time to Revisit Your Advance Care Plan?

I’m getting ready to take a big trip in the fall, and as I was working on preparations today it occurred to me that it’s been a while since this blog said anything about advance care planning. When it comes to making an advance care plan, a lot of people think it’s something you do […]

Being Great Doesn’t Happen By Accident

Think about the last time you saw somebody do something really amazing. Maybe it was an athletic event, maybe it was a magic trick, maybe it was someone absolutely cleaning up on Jeopardy! by answering questions you wouldn’t have thought anybody knew the answers to. These incredible moments are super impressive, and usually brief—maybe a […]

New In Person Training with Alison Nail Malone

It’s a new year and here at the International Doula Life Movement we are hitting the ground running! We have so many big plans and new opportunities lined up, both for IDLM as a community and for individual students and grads looking for something new. One of the things we are most excited about is […]

IDLM Partner Spotlight: Doulado

We all know how much hard work goes into being a doula. Lots of multi-tasking, quick thinking, problem solving, patience, and even physical labor sometimes! To be a doula, you have to be somebody who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty. But for a lot of us, all that hard work and those difficult […]

Heather Harman

International Doula Life Movement’s Tree of Life Conference is getting closer and closer! We have spent a great deal of time these past few weeks introducing the many experts and speakers who will be joining us for our Tree of Life Conference, but we still have one person left. She is a long-time member of […]

Back To School

It’s still hot out, but autumn is right around the corner, and that means back to school time. The tradition of school terms starting in the fall goes back at least a hundred and fifty years in the United States. Schools took summer off because so many of the students came from farming families. They […]

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